Yes. You're missing the 'I haven't tested this myself' bit. Id like to be SURE that the card does it properly before I buy it.

On the other hand I think you are missing a pair of glasses!

QUOTE (Halcyon @ Jul 29 2003, 08:55)

- Terratec DMX6fire can output 44.1kHz digitally bit perfect as 44.1kHz without resampling. I've tested this myself. Sorry! Can't remember if Sensaura was on or off (I *think* OFF, but can't be sure anymore).

QUOTE (probedb @ Aug 7 2006, 07:06)

Did everyone just ignore me? I mentioned a $25 card that does bit-perfect out....

But did you test it? LOL

QUOTE (puntloos @ Aug 7 2006, 17:15)

I didn't ignore you, but you said I needed to download some weird ASIO driver to make it work...

If you already found your glasses, go to some obscure website called www.google.com and enter "ASIO4ALL".

Yes. You're missing the 'I haven't tested this myself' bit. Id like to be SURE that the card does it properly before I buy it.

On the other hand I think you are missing a pair of glasses!

No, that card is impossible to get (well maybe 2nd hand) - out of production.

QUOTE

QUOTE (Halcyon @ Jul 29 2003, 08:55)

- Terratec DMX6fire can output 44.1kHz digitally bit perfect as 44.1kHz without resampling. I've tested this myself. Sorry! Can't remember if Sensaura was on or off (I *think* OFF, but can't be sure anymore).

QUOTE (probedb @ Aug 7 2006, 07:06)

Did everyone just ignore me? I mentioned a $25 card that does bit-perfect out....

But did you test it? LOL

Well it is mildly important.. is this 'direct passthrough digital' seems to be a fringe requirement that a lot of soundcard makers put in the feature list as an afterthought. I don't want to end up with a dud..

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QUOTE (puntloos @ Aug 7 2006, 17:15)

I didn't ignore you, but you said I needed to download some weird ASIO driver to make it work...

If you already found your glasses, go to some obscure website called www.google.com and enter "ASIO4ALL".

I never said I couldn't find it, I said the drivers sounded dicey, I prefer something that does what I want out of the box rather than depend on some 3rd party freeware project that might or not work. Are there no soundcards with drivers that 'Just Do It' ?

krt. leave it to creative to be extra-super-fuzzy about what output formats its digital output module supports.

For one I would need the 'platinum' to even get digital out, but also (or the extrememusic with optional breakout module). But secondly while browsing the specs I get the impression that while the X-Fi's DACs do indeed support 192Khz, its digital out only reaches 96.

Now all I need to do is find out 'for sure' that the m-audio does what I want, direct-audio-wise.

It does say 'ASIO 2.0 support'. Is that an automatic confirmation there? Or doesnt that mean anything for bit-exact output?

Yep ASIO 2.0 support. I have one. 192 kHz in two-channel mode. It's not low-latency however though. I don't really see why you would need a sampling rate that high anyway. 96 kHz is great for surround sound, other than that.

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krt. leave it to creative to be extra-super-fuzzy about what output formats its digital output module supports.

I wouldn't do business with a company that short changes people personally and let's keep it at that

Now all I need to do is find out 'for sure' that the m-audio does what I want, direct-audio-wise.

It does say 'ASIO 2.0 support'. Is that an automatic confirmation there? Or doesnt that mean anything for bit-exact output?

Yep ASIO 2.0 support. I have one. 192 kHz in two-channel mode. It's not low-latency however though. I don't really see why you would need a sampling rate that high anyway. 96 kHz is great for surround sound, other than that.

Well yes but the high end audio formats of the future (DTS audio, SACD, DVD-A) sometimes do have 192Khz versions already. I don't want to be left in the lurch the moment those start becoming commonplace.

QUOTE

QUOTE

krt. leave it to creative to be extra-super-fuzzy about what output formats its digital output module supports.

I wouldn't do business with a company that short changes people personally and let's keep it at that

I tend to agree, creative isn't a company I respect that much. Every sound card they've ever brought out has some type of weird compromise, be it in the output (hiss on SB128) drivers (live) or in the hardware (48Khz resample - audigy)

Their whole driver arrangement blows too.. lots and lots of insane checks. You can only install upgrade X if you have drivers Y with setting Z.. Basically if you don't have your original driver CD you're out of luck for a LOT of features. Well.. this is kinda off-topic, sorry. End of Rant.

Well no I mean I DONT want them to output 'ding' If I have 2 soundcards, I can tell windows to 'ding' on the soundblaster and have winamp(foobar) be the only app to send audio to the pro card and into my main speakers.

Of course. You choose this via the software in some way. For my E-MU card you have a wav (windows) input and an asio input and can direct these to whatever outputs you want and switch very easily between settings. Other cards will work in different ways.

QUOTE

I need:- stereo- 24bits/192Khz- Preferrably but not explicitly necessary: good DA convertors- and the main requirement: bitperfect digital out

Actually, I think there is officially no such thing as 192kHz SPDIF output.

If you look at RME's website, in some of their product descriptions they mention that they are the only company that provides 192kHz over SPDIF. I assume this also means that you can only make use of it when connecting to RME devices...

Actually, I think there is officially no such thing as 192kHz SPDIF output.

If you look at RME's website, in some of their product descriptions they mention that they are the only company that provides 192kHz over SPDIF. I assume this also means that you can only make use of it when connecting to RME devices...

Nah, Ive been looking into this a bit, and I think that in theory there are no limits to the format, khz-wise. It is limited to 24bits, but that's fine. The 'clock speed' and 'data speed' are free to choose, all that needs to happen is that the receiving device can keep up of course. Fact is that the m-audio 5.1 does it, and also the e-mu 1212m.

I need to look closely at the m-audio since its 3x as cheap as the e-mu. It lacks a lot of inputs/outputs but it does have a fully featured spdif out, which is really all I want. Plus (obviously) it needs to be able to do the bit-identical thing we spoke about. Hotshot says he got that to work, so Im quite hopeful but Ill read up a touch more.. no need to rush.

For one I would need the 'platinum' to even get digital out, but also (or the extrememusic with optional breakout module).

No you don't But i definately agree with you that the specs are VERY confusing. Thing is, you get digital-out from the so called "flexi-jack" connector - Buy a mono minijack-phono converter, and you're all set! I'm sure even the cheapest models have the flexi-jack, but they hide it to promote the bigger models i guess. I have the fatality model myself.

@puntloos:Why don't you buy an ESI Juli@? This is considered a very good card with bit-perfect drivers that work without hassle with any audio player software. I use ESI drivers with my Chaintech AV-710 and I am very pleased with the performance. If you want coaxial digital out without a breakout cable you may choose the ESI Maya 44 instead of the Juli@. Both cards are around $100.

I am somewhat confused now - Pio said that Hercules do resample. So, my Fortissimo 4 resamples? Some people on these forums told me that this specific card does not resample. Also, the driver allows me to set the output frequency (44.1, 48, 96 and 192) - if I set it to 44.1, does this mean that the card still resamples?

I am somewhat confused now - Pio said that Hercules do resample. So, my Fortissimo 4 resamples? Some people on these forums told me that this specific card does not resample. Also, the driver allows me to set the output frequency (44.1, 48, 96 and 192) - if I set it to 44.1, does this mean that the card still resamples?

Are you referring to this?

QUOTE (Pio2001 @ Jul 28 2003, 21:04)

You can rule out all soundcards by Creative, Turtle beach, or Hercules (exept maybe used with ASIO support, like jrbamford says). The 24/96 soundcards by M-Audio and Terratec support perfect digital playback in Windows 98/me. Not sure about 2000.

Creative X-Fi cards let you select the master clock frequency, including 44.1 kHz, and also have a bit-perfect mode in "audio creation" mode.

I just tried to enable bit-matched playback on my X-fi (on x64), however i think theres a fault in the driver because I get 48khz output on every material i try to playback. I tried contacting Creative about this, but have not yet got an informative answer.

And weeeee have playback. Im fairly disappointed by the lack of controls though. The driver dates back to 2004 as well. Some things I noticed:

- To even enable the digital out, you need to select digital speakers.. fair enough, though it would've been nice if they would MENTION this somewhere in the manuals.- There's no way to CONTROL the digital out. Im surprised it even chose 44K/16bits. I would like to be able to manually set, and check this.- ASIO doesn't work. I'm using winamp's asio plugin, I can select m-audio asio (which came with the driver), it says it plays, but the digital audio doesn't actually leave the card. (also the VU-meters don't light up like they do with normal playback)- ASIO4ALL doesn't improve things. It also gets confused about the m-audio, says its a beyond spec card, says its input doesnt work, says it works now.. *boggle*- Curiously, when I played a 48Khz mp3 (hah i didnt even realise it was 48k!), the card stayed at 44Khz SPDIF mode, but the clock was skewed! My DAC's spdif sync led got very confused.. blink.. blinkblink.. blinkity... <black> .. blink.. at least it sounded fine.- Tried with foobar2k, no joy. Didn't try foobar's ASIO plugin yet.

Again, so far Im mixed about the whole deal and the $80 I paid for the card.

While I agree that you don't want your soundcard mangling what's sent to it, I'm not sure bit-perfect output of 44.1kHz sampled content is the best you can do.

If you're as concerned about sound quality as puntloos says, surely it's much better (at least in theory) to resample to 96kHz 24bits using a high quality resampler (e.g. those in foobar2k) and send that to your sound card. (Obviously you want the 24/96 fb2k output to be transferred, bit perfect, via the sound card to your outboard DAC).

I'm not claiming an audible difference, but there's certainly a measurable difference. You get a very sharp anti-alias filter at 22.05kHz - much better than you'll find in any DAC, even those with serious oversampling included.

Sorry you're having trouble puntloos. The M-audio cards do integrate into windows differently from many other cards, specifically to allow propper control and bit-perfect output. On my audiophile 2496, it's all quite logical. You need to send output to the digital output to get digital output because it's a separate output. I don't have any further insights though - I haven't used ASIO.

I have to make one admission here.. my DAC is the 'weakest link' in the chain, in one very relevant way: It only supports 44/48Khz. I am not quite sure but I do think it does supports higher bit depths than '16'. This is why I hoped I could change bitdepth somewhere in the m-audio controls.

For me the most relevant thing is that as 2BDecided said, I would like winamp to decode the mp3, then either:

1/ at 100% volume, pass it on to the output bit-perfect.2/ if winamp is required to do stuff (attenuate?), immediately upsample, do 'some processing' and only downsample/dither at the last possible moment.

If you're as concerned about sound quality as puntloos says, surely it's much better (at least in theory) to resample to 96kHz 24bits using a high quality resampler (e.g. those in foobar2k) and send that to your sound card. (Obviously you want the 24/96 fb2k output to be transferred, bit perfect, via the sound card to your outboard DAC).

I'm not claiming an audible difference, but there's certainly a measurable difference. You get a very sharp anti-alias filter at 22.05kHz - much better than you'll find in any DAC, even those with serious oversampling included.

Oversampling DACs will reduce the effect of the anti-alias filter so much that I would doubt that there is a signficant difference in performance of the filter versus a software SRC algorithm. I really don't think you are going to gain quality by resampling in software if your DAC is well designed.